As SEO is concerned, you should always follow the rules and regulations released by your search engines. You should never do strategies which would hack or bypass these rules as these are the standards in optimizing your site. No matter how much you want to get over these limits, you have to follow them. You have to go through these steps in order to provide quality solutions to your viewers. But what if your competitors use black hat in SEO? What if they increase traffic by using forbidden and prohibited strategies? Would you also do the same?

Before 2015 ended, some of our readers were already warning us about some site owners that were slowly realizing that some BLACK HAT strategies were actually working. These led to various site masters to use these unauthorized strategies which do bring traffic. But as someone who wants only the best for their clients and their viewers, should you really turn to black hat? Will you also fight off those competitors with the same kind of strategy?

As site owners, you should never fight fire with fire. In the world of online marketing and website handling, it should be the customers that are prioritized in your strategies, not your costs and your earnings.

So if you noticed that your competitors are using black hat strategies in SEO, what should you do?

1. Never try negative SEO – Although it’s enticing, you should resist the urge of using negative/black hat SEO. Yes, it may bring you ‘good’ results, but it does always come with a price. You may enjoy everything for now, but it would definitely cost you in the future.
2. Report immediately – File a report on Google. Make sure that your report covers everything in details. Some people may not recommend this as Google does not always provide feedbacks on such reports, but it is definitely better if you file one. It would be much better if two or more other people report the same problem as it would catch more attention.
3. Observe any changes on your site – Look if your site was also damaged by their black hat optimization. Search for bad links and devoid them. Make sure that everything’s under your control as it would hurt your site on Google ranking.
4. Wait for developments – Last but not the least, wait for anything to happen. You shouldn’t expect Google to work out with the problem immediately (but eventually, it will work on your report once it already received this.) Seek out additional help from other specialists to ensure that your site won’t be affected by such optimization.

Remember, black hat website traffic strategies are high risks optimizations that shouldn’t be done by any site owners. If your competitors are using these, you better stay out of it!